Fertile Schmyrtle

I don't really feel I should declare myself infertile, though I guess I have not used any birth control for over a year now. I know some of those cycles the timing just wasn't very good, so I don't count them in my head. As I've said before, it doesn't seem like we are really trying, since we aren't doing all the things we did last time around (temping, OPKing, pre-seed....etc). I've been focusing on not letting the hopes for another pregnancy consume me. Now that a year of that has rolled around, I'm getting frustrated with this method I guess.

On the day my period came, I found myself in the pharmacy section of Meijer looking for Benadryl cream for bug-bites. As I passed through the aisles, I saw something I hadn't seen before - FR fertility test for women. I scanned the box quickly and saw it tested for FSH and figured it probably needed to be used on the 3rd day of your cycle. I put it in the cart on an impulse. FSH is one measure of ovarian reserve. An over-simplified way to explain this is - if your body is having to work harder to ripen an egg, you will have more FSH. An elevated FSH level may mean that you are past your fertile days, or heading there.

Yesterday I peed on that stick, as the directions called for, on cd3 with FMU. With this test, you read them quite opposite of an OPK. There should be two lines, but the desired result is that the test line is lighter than the control line. If the test line is similar or darker than the test line, it indicates that FSH levels are probably elevated and you should seek testing with your doctor. Surprisingly, my test line was very faint at the 30 minute read mark. It was still faint at an hour, at the end of result reading window. It actually was still faint when I threw the test away last night. (I'm a POASaholic, what can I say?)

I know that this test is not a replacement for true cd3 bloodwork performed by a doctor. I know that. I'm just not ready to go in for that yet. I probably will before this year is out though. Right now I'm just happy to know that this test didn't yield negative results for me. I still feel the problem is me, though John has never been tested. One would think his quality would have improved with the 70 pound weightloss so far and the lack of binge drinking since his surgery. So we wait, and I hope that someday in the near future I'll see two pink lines that mean something more.